August is Here! Adios July!

It seems that every time I update the Phuket weather blog, the weather changes. If the last thing I wrote was "sunny", the next day is wet and windy. If I write about rain, the next day is sunny. Well, that's the low season! Weather right now is not perfect, but there are lots of nice days. If you travel to Phuket in low season, be ready to take the rough with the smooth. You will almost certainly get some rain, indeed you might be unlucky and get lots of rain .. or lucky and get no rain. Day by day forecasts are normally useless. Forecasts on most generic weather sites show rainy symbols for months .. "chance of rain" or "chance of a thunderstorm". Whereas, and I hope this blog makes it clear, many days are absolutely lovely. And (bonus!) hotel prices are really low in low season ( see Agoda for Phuket hotels).

Last update on the weather blog was July 22nd and the weather had been mostly quite nice for a while. Then of course it changed on the 22nd, not because I was updating the blog, but rather annoyingly, the local Kathu village festival started that evening. We managed to walk around the village for an hour in between heavy rain showers and planned to go again on the 23rd, but ...

23rd July (from my Twitter feed) "Was a wet night ... 58mm rain measured at my house overnight. Shame for the Kathu village festival!"

Rain held off during the day, but then late afternoon "Rainy evening again just like yesterday as we were about to head to the Kathu street festival."

Shame! So we headed that evening to Phuket Town and had burgers at the Rider Cafe :)

The burgers were kids choice - birthday dinner for our daughter, though her actual birthday is the 24th, so on the 24th we went out again, ny choice this time - Kopitiam, on Thalang Road in Phuket Town. Good local Thai food there. And some interesting drinks - try this one .. butterfly pea flower with lime :



Photo above from Instagram, please do follow me if you use it!

The 24th started wet and windy but got better later on. And then the 25th ...

"It's a lovely sunny Thursday morning in Phuket!"

See, the rainy days don't last too long normally, and it does not tend to rain all day on a rainy day.

Here's the evening sky as seen from my house on the 25th :



Friday 26th "Friday morning weather report ... slightly hazy, but looks like a sunny day on the way :)"

Saturday 27th "Hot #weather now in #Phuket ... Roasting hot afternoon"

And on the evening of the 27th we boarded the luxury dive boat Diva Andaman for dinner and drinks, with the team from Sunrise Divers in Phuket being invited by the owner of the boat - it's a beautiful boat!



(above) Sunset at Chalong Bay, 27th July (from Instagram)



(above) Evening at Chalong Bay, 27th July on board the Diva Andaman

On Sunday 28th ... "Sunday morning #Phuket weather report ... rather grey.Hoping for sun later as I join a sunset cruise ..."

What's that? Another boat? Yep! On Sunday evening we all went on the MV Sai Mai, which does charters for small groups. It's run by my friends at Easy Day Thailand and they want to offer some sunset snorkeling/dinner trips, so we headed to Coral Island for a nice evening :)



We just about got a sunset though the day had been mostly cloudy :)

Monday 29th "Phuket weather this morning ... trying to be sunny."

Tuesday 30th "Phuket weather today .. so far, very similar to the last 2 days - kind of cloudy, trying to be sunny, not rainy."

Here's a timelapse video for 30th July from the Patong Beach Webcam..... Sometimese these timelapses work pretty well, you can find more on Youtube - see Sawadeecam.



Wednesday 31st "Morning weather ... dark clouds on the hills to the west, bright skies to the east. The day could go either way."

That was yesterday, and it was mostly quite nice, but the dark clouds came back in the evening about 5pm. And it rained a lot in the night - my rain gauge measured over 70mm which mostly fell during the evening and night. So we have a rainy day again! Today (1st August) we've had a wet morning, it's now 10am as I write this. Weather forecast for the next couple of days is also wet and windy. And then next week should be sunny again.

NEWS - People may have seen news of an oil spill in Thailand this week. It happened near the small island of Koh Samet which is in the Gulf of Thailand, east of Bangkok, and not that far from the border with Cambodia. I know that many visitors don't really know the geography of the region, so you might be thinking twice about a trip to Phuket because of the oil spill. OK ... Phuket is on the west coast of Thailand, in a different sea to the oil spill. It won't affect the west coast of Thailand. Same country, but different body of water. Here's a map I made yesterday to illustrate this point :


View Location of Oil Spill near Koh Samet in relation to Phuket and the Similan islands in a larger map

Have a good August!